In 1986, Norman Tebbit compiled a dossier of complaints about BBC coverage of America's bombing raid on Libya. The Conservative Party routinely attacks the BBC - not least because it cannot abide any organisation faintly reminiscent of a nationalised industry - so many discounted the stunt. Nevertheless Tebbit, not a man given to delicacy, took one precaution. He launched his broadside without naming the BBC reporter responsible for the controversial transmissions from Tripoli.

For Tebbit, party chairman at the time, has always had an astute sense of political basics. And he knew he would not get away with attacking Kate Adie. The Tories might as well have derided the Queen Mother.

Fifteen years later, the Government is attacking Adie again. But this time, it is a New Labour government. And Alastair Campbell is behind the Exocet. He claims that the BBC's chief news correspondent irresponsibly revealed details of the Prime Minister's travel plans at a time of international crisis. Campbell must have thought he could get away with the charge. And it conveniently distracted from an embarrassing row about the release of awkward Government news on the day of the World Trade Centre attack.

But tough, relentless, flak-jacketed Adie - with her schoolmarm looks and machine-gun intonation - has bitten back. She says she is considering legal action - once she returns from her current 'active service' in the Gulf States. (And what better retort could there be to the armchair spin doctors stuck in Downing Street?)

Adie, 56 last month, is now one of the best known faces of British broadcasting. Squaddies jest that if she is sent to their posting they know they're in real trouble. And a secretary at Broadcasting House discloses: 'By far the largest number of public speaking requests we have is for Kate. Thousands every year. It makes Jeremy Paxman look like yesterday's man.'

Popular with the public, instantly recognised, highly experienced and with a reputation for guts under fire. Her bosses backed her judgment last week - 'Details of Tony Blair's itinerary were being broadcast by Arabic news agencies and given out by embassies. It's ridiculous to suggest we should have kept them secret.' But they wish she would move on. Why?

Kathryn Adie is the adopted child of a Sunderland pharmacist and his wife. Born in 1945, she attended the private Sunderland Church High School. It may well have been there that she picked up her slightly strange voice - half marchioness, half staff sergeant. No doubt ideal for the BBC in the early 1970s, it is a touch grating now, particularly in an era where regional voices are better appreciated than they once were. 'Kate's success has never surprised me,' says Joan Mckenzie, a schoolfriend. 'She always set her goals and pursued them.'

After graduating in Scandinavian Studies from nearby Newcastle University, Adie joined the BBC in local radio. Highly rated, she moved to national news in 1979, and it was shortly afterwards that she had her first big break.

She was duty reporter when the SAS went in to break up the Iranian Embassy siege. Adie reported from behind a car door as smoke bombs exploded in the background and soldiers abseiled in to rescue the hostages.

'I'm honestly not sure we had the best report,' recalls one very senior newsreader. 'ITN was at its peak in those days and it had brilliant pictures too. But we had Kate. She was calm, but with an urgency and concern unknown in a field that prides itself on absolute coolness. And she was a woman who was suddenly in the public eye, which even a year after Margaret Thatcher came to power was still unusual.'

With a curious break of two years as Court Correspondent - she would have been a fitting combatant for Princess Anne had they ever crossed swords - Adie covered most of the major international crises of the following decade. The Falklands. Libya. Tiananmen Square. The Gulf War. The former Yugoslavia.

In Libya she saw the terror caused by the bombing of Tripoli, and communicated it so well that the Tories called it biased. In Beijing, she stayed with her camera crew while bullets were flying around Tiananmen Square, and produced a report which challenged anyone who heard it not to will the immediate downfall of the regime responsible. In Bosnia she stepped immediately into the shoes of her colleague Martin Bell when he had been wounded in action.

'She works, works, works,' says one of her producers. 'She never gives up. She wants to beat ITN in particular. But even that's not enough now. She wants to beat the world. CNN. Fox. They're all the enemy as far as she's concerned. And when she's good, she's brilliant. She writes fantastically and has that authentic voice. And yes, it is a woman's voice. If that engages millions of other women in what used to be a man's reporting world, then so much the better.'

Awards, honorary degrees and public recognition have followed, as well as an OBE in 1993. But for every gram of public acclaim, there seems to be a counter-balancing ounce of private resentment among colleagues. Almost everyone who works with Adie has some story to tell which does not reflect well on their colleague.

And she is, incidentally, famously litigious - she reportedly won £125,000 from the Mail on Sunday after it foolishly suggested that her reputation as a fearless reporter was a myth. Thus critics have to be careful. But some charges are undisputed.

Nine years ago, upon Adie's return to Libya, Colonel Gadafi's foreign information director wrote to the BBC complaining that it was 'as if we have nothing to do except Kate Adie'. He protested wanly about the 'irresponsible and incomprehensible behaviour of your correspondent, with whom we suffer a lot. She insists on imposing her own rules and dictates orders and instructions.'

A journalist who was there with her said: 'They wanted to tamper with her film. She simply wouldn't let it happen.' But the Libyan protest still rang a bell with dozens of BBC staff who have felt exactly the same.

Producers rarely send Adie out in Britain nowadays. Her arrival can spark public alarm. And some say she has lost her focus. But if Adie has lost her focus, it may be that the BBC itself has not developed one of its best-known names. Few reporters are still on the road day after day at 56, and after 30 years. They have been moved into other, less stress ful, strands of broadcasting. She has revitalised From Our Own Correspondent for Radio 4, which was becoming a tired vehicle, but little else has been arranged for her.

'She senses that something's not quite right, I'm sure,' says a colleague who has worked with Adie for years. 'I've seen her with tears in the corner of her eyes, she doesn't understand why she's disliked. When she comes into the office, it's as if Princess Margaret has arrived. No one knows quite what to say.'

'I think there's some envy that she's a woman - as if that gets her more coverage - and women will always be accused of being over-emotional,' says another colleague. But Adie herself has briskly criticised 'crying peasants' coverage of women in war zones. 'She can be desperately awkward and truculent and demanding. But then most of our big-name reporters and presenters are bloody difficult to work with. She's not unique in any sense.'

What is unique about Adie, however, is that people know almost nothing about her private life. She spends time in Sunderland and in 1993 discovered her real family, although resented the prurient tabloid obsession with them which the news generated.

Her London home is a stark modern flat in west London. She earns a reported £115,000 a year and is about to sign a serialisation deal for her autobiography which will probably secure her £500,000. But she is never spotted at the cinema like Michael Buerk, or the opera like John Sergeant, or dining at the Gay Hussar like Jeremy Paxman. One of her close friends is known to be a producer at the BBC, and she keeps in touch with Joan Mckenzie.

Apart from that, Adie appears to have very little 'hinterland'. There is little else in her life except the BBC. 'She would no more defect to ITV than elope to Las Vegas,' insists one admirer. That might be what makes her so obsessive, driven and ruthless in her commitment. And what makes her determined to protect her employer from the buffeting it has experienced all too often at the hands of a political class with something to hide.

About this article

The Observer Profile: Kate Adie

This article was published on
the Guardian website
at 20.12 EDT on Saturday 13 October 2001.
It was last modified at 20.12 EDT on Sunday 14 October 2001.
It was first published at 20.12 EDT on Sunday 14 October 2001.